SPRING IS HERE

I have changed the header picture which shows Maureen Kearney and June Wakeham collecting primroses on Herne Hill.

Those little baskets bring back so many memories for me - just so cute.

 

Primroses grew everywhere and smelt delicious but not as overpowering and heady as the smell of bluebells in the woods in May. We would pick armfuls to carry home and were covered in the white sticky sap from the stems.

I don't have any memory of wild daffodils -

Do You?

JJ

From Janice Symons

WOW who knew that walnut whips had been around that long, must have been too expensive for our pocket books... But thanks for the info Jean, the pictures of the whips looked heavenly mmmmm .

Sad about Kenny , I thought he was just the cutest looking guy when I was a little girl , Loved John's account of their adventures. What fun we all had as kids, I swear the weather always seemed to be sunny, but the few photos I have it doesn't look that way, Oh well it was a GREAT Childhood Take care Love Jan

Memories Of Kenny from John Satchell

hi jean,


what a sad day yesterday to read about the passing of kenny laughton.

the laughtons lived very close to us in summervale, and as kids we were often together, me and tony, kenny and pat, specially on sunday afternoons, playing all sorts of street games on the ring (right by our houses), and down the lane.

i can clearly remember when they were laying a huge (to us little 'uns) concrete pipe under the lane, and at the weekends when the workmen weren't around we used to crawl up and down this thing - heedless of any danger, and have all sorts of games "underground".

this memory brings to mind those games of "tracking", when half the gang would run off with a lump of chalk (brought back from lyme regis!), and scrawl arrows and clues around town, to be tracked by the other half of the gang! i remember being totally impressed with gloria dixon who could write her clues in french (she went to the convent!!), whereas the junior school in ditton street didn't stretch to foreign languages!

other stuff i remember with pat and kenny were scrumping, midnight feasts and fishing in "our" beautiful river isle.

anyway, one winter sunday afternoon, when we were about 10 years old, kenny and i were on our bikes, well i was on my dad's bike which was fitted with sturmey archer gears), just cycling up and down summervale making those endless circuits of the green, probably waiting for the walls ice cream van to turn up.

somehow we got it into our two heads that we should go a bit further and maybe ride to lyme regis!!

now lyme is about 17 miles from summervale and certainly way further than we had ever cycled before, and it was a totally crazy idea in retrospect, but hey we were just kids and full of that wonderful optimism and can-do that we had then and seem not to have now!

so without saying a word to anyone, we set off!

first chard, then axminster and finally whoopee, lyme regis!!

of course it was now almost dark, and after messing about on the beach we thought we should "head back!"

pitch dark, no lights on our bikes, about 7 o'clock, we were exhausted and still only a couple of miles out of lyme, and we were getting the feeling that we had been totally stupid!

what to do?

no-one knew where we were and they were probably getting demented back home. we had school the next day, sunday was bath night, and always an early-to-bed night, hell were we in trouble!

on a long hill we were pushing our bikes when out of the dark loomed a red telephone box!

the only people i knew in the whole of somerset with a phone line were the beard family, who lived across the road from us satchells in summervale, but i didn't know their number. luckily i had used a phone before (!!), so i dialled O and blurted out our sad tale of woe to the kind lady who spoke to me.

she called the police and somehow mr and mrs beard were contacted too!

how this saga ended i have no recollection!! it's all a blur, of frantic parents, policemen, vans, cars and no school the next day!

i can't remember any fallout over this. ken and i were certainly not punished, or feted as heroes at school and now he's gone i don't suppose anyone else in the world remembers it!!

maybe i should ask my mum what really happened!!

once again, a very sad bit of news.

i just had a long chat with tony, he was as shocked and sad as me to hear about kenny, and we would both like to send pat our deepest sympathy.

thanks for updating us jean.

take care

john

Janice remembers her sweeties

Loved the trot down memory lane about the Sweets... I never could suck the sherbet through the straw had to dip it in and suck off the sherbet...

 

Loved the Five Boys chocolate bar ... The kids were weird !!!

Pineapple chunks were great they lasted so long, but so did the ripped up tongue .

I loved Smiths crisps too with the little blue bag of salt all damp, which made it hard to sprinkle over the crisps... I can still remember the big pennies, really hard for a five year old to hold on to, for my tuppance worth of aniseed balls.

I thought walnut whips came out in the sixties, Mum and I loved them, bite the walnut off the top and see who could keep the shape while we sucked out the yummy filling to

get to the next walnut down the bottom...

Launched in 1910 by Duncan's of Edinburgh, Walnut Whip is Nestlé Rowntree's oldest current brand. Over one million walnuts, most of them imported from China and India, are used every week in the manufacture of Walnut Whips at Halifax, West Yorkshire. Nestlé claim that a Walnut Whip is eaten almost every two seconds in the UK

Mum Peter and I loved milk bottles, you got so many for tuppance...

Oh and rhubarb and custard ,

I can get those in a store over here called Cost Plus world market , they are all made by Bassetts. not for tuppance though..

Janice.

Another Sad Loss

Ken Laughton

21st. April 1944 – 3rd. March 2010

I am sorry to tell you all that Ken died recently in South Africa and leaves two sons and a daughter and 9 grandchildren.

Pat tells me that

“he loved South Africa, made lots of friends and had a good, happy life.  He worked mainly in Hotels as a Manager and then bought and ran a Bar of his own.  He always kept his life quite private and moved from time to time but always kept in touch with me.He had Cancer of the Lungs and Heart Failure. I am so pleased that I spoke to him the day before he passed away, he was still having a laugh and a joke.”

Yes, we will all remember his cheeky smile and his sense of humour.

Rest In Peace Ken – you will not be forgotten.

JJ

 

WHO LEFT THIS COMMENT?

Anonymous said...


I seem to remember two more Humphries,Hazel the eldest and Rodney the youngest.The Selfs were a family of three children Alan,Pauline and Bobby.Hope that helps.



Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Dying to know - who are you?
JJ